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April 22 The WildSome of you might remember the movie "Madagascar" that came out a few months ago. It was about a lion and his friends escaping from the Central Park Zoo, becoming stowaways on a boat and then eventually finding themselves shipwrecked on an uncharted island where they discover how hard it is for domesticated animals to live in the wild. Well... In "The Wild", the lion and his friends who escape, become stowaways on a boat and find themselves shipwrecked on an uncharted island where they discover how hard it is for domesticated animals to live in the wild, are from the New York Zoo. See? And even though the Central Park Zoo and the New York Zoo are administered by the same parent organization, they are still completely different Zoos, hence these are completely different movies. Obviously. April 16 Do I watch too many movies?Here I am, waiting for the bus in Factoria and I'm looking out on the horizon and I'm thinking: "Those clouds look so fake. That's a really cheap matté shot." April 09 SlitherBefore you judge this movie, you might want to ask yourself: How good of a movie could *I* make with the provided premise? Specifically, slugs from outer space wreak havoc in a small redneck-infested town. I think this crew did exceedingly well, under such constraints. And for those of you wondering, it is not a parody. It has some humour in it, but it is otherwise a genuine horror movie, in the genre of _Body Snatchers_ or _Night of the Living Dead_. But the slugs do move very quickly, so the threat is not too laughable. Although the line "Don't let them into your mouth!" did make me laugh. I would be more worried about the other orifices, but maybe that's just me. One thing bothered me though... can a police radar measure the speed of an object movie in circle around you? The distance to the target is fairly constant. The radar gun would need to have a gyroscope to measure angular movement. Do they? Not that it has anything to do with the plot, just a random observation. Another thing that bothers me, and this does relate to the plot, why do sci-fi writers always feel the need to make "body snatching" aliens be controlled from one central entity? Even Star Trek eventually introduced a Borg Queen. I realize it makes the final confrontation a bit more dramatic, but it makes the aliens a little too vulnerable. This alien is supposed to be billions of years old, that's a long time to move around the galaxy, devouring entire planets, without having a rock fall on your head or some other such bad luck. But Kudos to the writers on resisting the urge of using salt as a weapon and for not having the "infected" towns' people return to normal after the alien dies. That would have been a cheap attempt at a happy ending. Thank You for SmokingEvery time I see one of those idiotic ad from the anti-smoking group "The Truth", I want to go buy a pack of cigarettes and start smoking. I just can't stand the idea that we're on the same side of an argument. But then this movie teaches us that, to win an argument, you don't need to prove that you're right, you only need to prove that the other guy is wrong. Maybe "The Truth" is actually an organization sponsored by Big Tobacco to make anti-smokers look like idiots!!! As a side note... The movie mentions a pitch for product placement of cigarettes in a futuristic movie, where the actors live in a space station with an all-oxygen atmosphere. People can't breathe 100% oxygen for very long! Space stations' atmospheres are only 21% oxygen. April 05 Stay AliveStay Alive? I barely managed to stay awake! This movie has the same basic plot as the _Final Destination_ movies, except without the one gimmick that made those movies even mildly original. I was expecting them to at least make a half-hearted attempt at having some kind of plot twist, but no, this movie is as predictable and unimaginative as they get. When people started dying, why didn't they just hit: up, left, left, X, down, Y, Y, while holding the left trigger? Or whatever the cheat code for unlimited lives is. What a bunch of losers... I mean, literally, they lost the game. P.S. Remember to save often. Movie credentialsThere's a gymnastics movie coming soon, it looks bad enough on its own merit, but they are really not helping their cause when they claim "from the writer of _Bring It On_".
April 01 Basic Instinct 2Sharon Stone is 48 years old. She looks great for 48 years old, but she's hardly irresistible. The movie opens with an important social message: Don't *bleep* and drive. Lest your car goes off a bridge and plunges into the Seine... Rhine... Nile... whichever river goes through London. That's pretty much it for the action sequences in this movie, we now switch gears into a psychological thriller. Not all that thrilling though, a few people are killed and everyone wonders if Sharon Stone did it. And by "everyone", I mean every character in the movie, because the audience doesn't really care. The movie features "the egg", an office building in London. Back in my brief European tour last year, I had a chance to see that building, only a couple of days after seeing a very similar building in Barcelona. How many of those buildings are scattered around the world? I think they might be part of an alien invasion plan. See, the aliens could have infiltrated the city planning offices of several... hold on, Sharon is naked... all right, where was I? Aliens, right. So when the aliens are ready to invade, the buildings hatch and turn into giant... she's naked again... giant robots. Now that would make a great movie. Anyway, Sharon has her clothes back on, we must be getting close to the end here. The psychiatrist, the male lead of the movie, ends up locked up in psychiatric hospital. This kind of irony shows that this movie is far less clever than it thinks it is. Still, not a bad outcome for the shrink, considering that everyone else who slept with Sharon Stone's character ended up dying horribly. Ice Age 2: The LetdownThe little squirrel interludes were funny, but I had seen most of them in the previews. The main story is not bad, but not hilariously funny. I expect kids would enjoy it though. |
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